


The Tongue-Cut Sparrow

by gonfalonier



Category: American (US) Actor RPF, The Walking Dead RPF
Genre: M/M, Negotiations, Polyamory Mention, Roleplay, complicated adult emotions
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-08
Updated: 2017-09-08
Packaged: 2018-12-25 08:45:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12032322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gonfalonier/pseuds/gonfalonier
Summary: Jeff clears his throat and says to him, “I need you to get something.”  Austin turns his eyes away from the moth battering itself against the bulb.  Jeff steps forward so there’s no air between them, puts a hand on Austin’s hip, slides two fingers through the empty belt loop on the side.  Jeff says, “I need you to get that I’m doing this because I like you.  And sometime after this, if you’re amenable, you can come back up here and we’ll do things my way.”





	1. Chapter 1

On Thursday morning, Austin tries to pack a duffel. He tries folding a couple T-shirts (the way he was trained when he worked at K-Mart), but that feels stupid. He rolls his shoulders, affects indifference, and throws the same shirts into the bag in a heap. That’s even worse. He pushes the bag under his bed, still open, with the shirts in it. He goes to have a cigarette.

He’s out on the balcony, mid-drag, when the knocker knocks. He tucks the cig into the notch on the ashtray and he looks through the peephole before he just opens the door to whoever. It’s UPS. He signs for the thing, this soft package wrapped in brown paper. He takes it outside so he can get back to his smoke. The paper yields easy under his pocket knife.

“Jesus,” he says. “Shit.”

Austin’s a smart dude. He knows things, he intuits things. It doesn’t take him half a heartbeat to figure it out. There’s an envelope up on top, nicked from the pocket knife, marked with the word RECRUIT in fat permanent marker. Underneath, a white T-shirt, a drab button-up, black pants, black socks, fucking unflattering BVDs. A mote of ash lands on the envelope from the cig hanging between his lips, and Austin flicks it away, and it gets on the T-shirt and when he tries to get it again it grinds in and stains it. “God fucking --” He throws the cigarette off the balcony. His downstairs neighbor gripes, “Don’t litter, asshole.” Austin grumbles an apology that the guy can’t hear and paces back inside.

He spends the next couple hours cleaning his apartment while the package stays untouched on the card table outside. He’s going to be gone for a while. He’d hate to come back to a bunch of shit, laundry piled up everywhere, cap off the toothpaste. (Should he bring toothpaste? Will Jeff have toothpaste for him? A toothbrush? He shoves a fold-up travel one into his shaving kit, then stares into the bag for a full minute contemplating whether he should shave.) When he’s done, it’s not sparkling because it’ll never be sparkling, but it smells like 409 and passes muster. The whole thing succeeded as a distraction, but time’s up. 

He goes back out to the balcony and glances at the ash stain on the shirt. Nothing’s going to get that out. He grunts, picks up the envelope, opens it up carefully with his knife, and tugs out the paper. It’s printed, Courier font, bold, and titled Intake Procedure. Weird to think of Jeff sitting down at a computer and writing this up, fucking around with fonts, with style, hunting and pecking at the keyboard. Austin scans the page, ten or twelve bullet points outlining curfew, lights out, house rules. 

_\- Recruit will surrender all human and legal rights at the threshold of the compound_  
\- Recruit will be assigned a serial number on arrival and will answer only to that number for the duration of intake  
\- Recruit will display deference and respect to CO at all times 

Jesus, that’s him, that’s Jeff, that’s what Austin’s signing on for. That’s what he wants. It’s what they talked about, and now it’s fucking concrete. All human and legal rights.  
*

It had been hard to explain to Jeff what he was after. Jeff had said, “You want me to fuck you, just ask, dude, it’s cool.” Austin had been galled. Had he not made himself clear?

“That ain’t it,” Austin told him, and Jeff laughed and said, “Ain’t it?”

Austin took a few minutes to think and to shake off the sting. They were drinking in Jeff’s room, just beer in the little kitchenette, leaning against the counter. Jeff was barefoot and it was fucking Austin up. There was nowhere on him Austin could look that didn’t fuck him up. So he said, “I want you to fuck me up. Like, get in my head and shit. Mess me up.”

“What, like Fight Club?” Jeff set his beer down and took a few steps to crowd Austin up against the counter. “Is that fun to you, son? Putting me through a lot of shit so you can figure yourself out?”

Austin said, “It’s not about me. It’s not about me.” The words hurtled out of him faster than he could think about them. “Man, don’t you ever get tired of getting your dick sucked?”

“No, I do not.”

Yeah. “Just thought you might want something different.” He took a swig of his beer and let the butt of the bottle tap Jeffrey’s chin. “Sir.” 

And that did it. The bottle was removed from his hand. Jeff’s fingers closed around his wrist and they shared a look that lasted less than a breath, Austin nodded, and then his arm was twisted up behind his back. Improbably, Austin laughed. He said to Jeff, “See?”

“Yeah, I fucking see.”

“You do this with other -- other guys?”

And then it was Jeff’s turn to laugh, low and gritty. “Dude,” he said, “that is _none_ of your fucking business.”


	2. Chapter 2

On the plane, Austin wears the clothes from the package and some Keds. He wears a hat, too, a newsboy cap to give him a sense of anonymity. He hasn’t gotten much recently. In the airport he signs a few things, takes a few selfies, and it’s nice. It keeps him busy. The plane ride’s bumpy and the lady next to him pops a valium and sleeps the whole time. Austin drinks his club soda and stares out the window. 

He lands expecting to get a cab. He doesn’t need one.

Jeff’s truck is nice. Vintage, but he probably doesn’t call it that. Austin asks, “Can I smoke in here?” And Jeff replies, “Sure, man,” casual with a smile, so they both smoke as they head out of the city and the buildings turn into forests and fields.

They stop to gas up in a little burg and Jeff says, “I’ll get you some water in there, if you want. A hot dog or something. You hungry, son?”

Jesus. “No, but thanks,” Austin says back. “I’m good.”

Jeff says, “I’ll get you something.” He disappears inside. Austin flinches when the gas pump clunks. Jeff returns with a pack of Sno-Balls and some peanut butter crackers and a huge bottle of water.

When Jeff gets back in the truck, Austin asks him, “Are we gettin’ started already? I said I didn’t want anything.”

“It’ll be a while before you get to eat again. You’ll need something. Go on, break it open, finish it up before we get up to the house.”

Austin shakes his hair back and then nods. Yeah. That was in the rules. He hasn’t eaten in a day and a half. This stuff might make him throw up, but it also might not. He drinks a bunch of water and then tears into the Sno-Balls, which are disgusting and perfect. His teeth sink slow into the marshmallow and he can feel it shaving away. He wants to bury his teeth in Jeff’s shoulder and taste his sweat and hear him yelp.

Jeff keeps the radio on NPR, and the two of them talk a little about the news, the shit. They don’t talk work, any kind of work. There’s been an earthquake in a country Austin couldn’t find on a map. Jeff says, “Damn. That sucks.” Austin rations out the rest of his water to keep his mouth from getting dry as he eats the crackers. He reaches out and turns down the radio so he can ask, “Will I have a chance to piss when we get there? Before I go inside?”

“Not if you touch my fuckin’ radio again.”

They both smile at that, and Austin gets comfortable. Jeff turns the radio back up, and Austin looks out the window at the pastures and the rising moon.

*

Austin didn’t suck Jeff’s dick that night. Jeff didn’t kick him out, either, they had a good time. Drank a few more beers and watched the fucking Battleship movie and Austin kept finding ways to press his luck. He asked Jeff, “Were you ever in the service?”

“No, not for real, but I’ve been through basic training for the job.”

“Yeah, me too.” There was a beat. Jeff scratched his thigh. Austin added, “Looks better on you.”

“Yeah? That’s your thing? Some military shit?” It wasn’t contemptuous. Curious, maybe. Sly, with a little laugh. Austin had to blink hard and twist his mouth to willfully ignore the way it made his dick jump.

“Maybe,” he answered around the lip of his beer. His arm still smarts from where Jeff fucked it up. “I like rules.”

“Structure.”

“Yeah.”

“You ever hear of those horse camps?”

“Shut up.”

Jeff laughed and jostled Austin’s knee with his own. “No,” he said to Austin, “go on, sorry. You like rules.”

The spell was broken. Austin shrugged and picked at the Shiner Bock label. He was embarrassed; he could feel it in the back of his teeth. “I don’t know. I like what I like.”

“C’mon, don’t pout about it.”

It was a non-smoking room, because all rooms are non-smoking rooms now, and Austin wanted to either smoke or die. Instead he said, “I just like being given a task, and then like, completing the task, doing the thing, and being told whether I did a good job or not.”

After that there was a long silence between the two of them. Jeff’s eyes were on him, but sidelong. Austin wasn’t being scrutinized. The movie was loud, thank god. Finally, Jeff knocked back the last of his beer and said, “You’re in the right business, dude.”


	3. Chapter 3

The farm has a gate out on the road that Jeff has to hop out of the truck to open. When he gets back in, before he can put the truck back in gear, Austin reaches out and touches his arm. His nerves are jumping. He says, “Hey.”

“Hey, man.”

“Is this it? The threshold?”

Jeff sits back and angles himself so his back is against the window. He regards Austin through his glasses. The headlights, on high-beam and shining down the driveway, are cut through by a family of deer. Jeff rubs a hand over his beard and then he says, “No. Not yet. Let’s fudge that a little.”

The driveway is a long dirt road. It jostles them, it makes Jeff’s voice shake when he points things out along the way. Farm things, normal things, illuminated by the headlights and the mounts on the top of the truck. Jeff bales his own hay in the fall and gives it out for community stuff. Cool. Austin tunes him out. He can’t think about hayrides while his dick hurts.

The house is nice. A big A-frame with a wrap-around porch. In the high-beams Austin can see a couple unwashed coffee mugs on the railing. If he can walk tomorrow, he plans to clean that up. “Get your shit,” Jeff says jovially as he throws the truck into park. “Last chance to piss and get a snack. You need anything else?”

Austin shakes his head but then he asks, “You want me to sign anything? In case something happens?” When he looks over, Jeff is regarding him seriously.

“Do you think,” Jeff says, and before he even finishes Austin knows this question is very rhetorical, “I don’t know how to run a safe operation? Do you seriously think you’re that fucking special?”

“I just meant, like --” Austin cuts himself off. His cheeks burn. “Sorry.”

“I’m a professional. You’re a professional. I got a wife, man, I got a little kid. I’m not gonna fucking kill you. Shit, not even your hair, that’s not even a thing.” He barks out a laugh that makes Austin flinch. “Gonna be the only fuckin’ recruit in history with hair like that.” Austin laughs too and it lowers his blood pressure. When Jeff speaks again, the edge is gone from his voice. He’s cool. He says, “I’m doing this because I wanna fuck you and this is the only way you’ll let me do it, brother.” Austin laughs again, and Jeff laughs with him, and the truck’s lights go off and then they’re sitting in the dark. “Hey,” says Jeff. Austin can see teeth. “I don’t do anything I don’t want to do. Do you?”

Some other time, somewhere else, not outside a man’s farmhouse where he’s come to have rough sex, Austin would balk. That’s a question that stems from a threadbare sense of self-awareness. It’s the lady in K-Mart on Thanksgiving saying, “It’s awful that you’re open today,” while she buys a dozen of whatever she’s buying. Austin would need another six hands to count off all the things he’s done that he didn’t want to do. He’s about to say that, even though he knows that’s not the question, that’s not what it means. Instead, he answers the question he’s sure Jeff meant to ask: “I’m in.”

“That’s my boy.” Jeff leans across and opens Austin’s door. “Go on.”

Austin feels with one foot before stepping out. Who knows what kind of animal shit or coyote carcass he could get tripped up on out here. When they get to the door they pause again. Jeff’s face is shadowed and cratered in the yellow light of the porch. In the silence, Austin looks up to follow a moth on its path to the light.

Jeff says, “This is it.”

“Figured. Nice place.”

“Thanks.” Jeff rubs his beard and, nostrils flared, breathes out. He frowns. “Still time to say no, man.”

“Same to you.”

They pause and consider. Out over the fields behind the truck, there’s nothing but breezes and rustling. Austin hasn’t seen a cloud all night, but now there’s one covering up the moon. Jeff clears his throat and says to him, “I need you to get something.” Austin turns his eyes away from the moth battering itself against the bulb. Jeff steps forward so there’s no air between them, puts a hand on Austin’s hip, slides two fingers through the empty belt loop on the side. Jeff says, “I need you to get that I’m doing this because I like you. And sometime after this, if you’re amenable, you can come back up here and we’ll do things my way.”

“I’d like that,” Austin says, and he means it. He doesn’t mind that hand on him at all. He doesn’t mind Jeff’s smile, either, those straight white teeth up close, the one whiff of vanity. “Next time.”

“Next time.”

Jeff unlocks the deadbolt, unlocks the knob, and opens the door into the dark house. The cloud’s rolled along and now the moon shines down through the skylights. Jeff sweeps his arm toward the interior and says, “Please,” and so Austin steps in and then there he is.

Jeff closes the door, clicks the handle, the deadbolt, and two privacy locks. He turns on a switch that bathes the room in lamplight. Austin turns his head to look over his shoulder, maybe say something, he hasn’t decided, but Jeff gets a hand on the top of his head and twists it back toward the living room. “Eyes forward,” is what Jeff says, and Austin says, “Oh, shit.”


End file.
